Digital Literacy

In “Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers” by Michael A Caulfield I learnt that I and my future students need to implement Michael’s four moves in proving if my facts are accurate. Teaching these moves would help educate all my students to check their sources for all class material. I truly believe that learning this new skill would help create logically thinking students.

  • Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.
  • Go upstream to the source: Go “upstream” to the source of the claim. Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.
  • Read laterally: Read laterally.[1] Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.
  • Circle back: If you get lost, hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole, back up and start over knowing what you know now. You’re likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions.

I absolutely loved Rachel Robertson’s lesson plans for helping my future students to understand the ideas and concepts around “fake news”. The objective of the lesson plans are to help students to analyze the problems and potential consequences associated with the spread of fake news. The lesson plans also helps students to identify and evaluate ways to avoid fake news in social and academic settings. Another great way to empower students to be logical thinkers.

And because I love logics, I found the resource by Peter Pappas “Fighting Fake News with Critical Thinking” intriguing. Side note…if you get a chance to take Logics – Phil 150 by Ryan Doran at the U of R , I highly recommend his class. I strongly feel that the best way to fight fake news is through educating our youth to think logically. This can begin to happen at any grade level and is important training for our future leaders.

We can achieve the goals set out by NCTE through the use of their lesson plans. It is so important to stay up-to-date as the educational landscape changes so quickly.

NCTE and its members will apply the power of language and literacy to actively pursue justice and equity for all students and the educators who serve them. As the nation’s oldest organization of pre-K through graduate school literacy educators, NCTE has a rich history of deriving expertise and advocacy from its members’ professional research, practice, and knowledge. Today, we must more precisely align this expertise to advance access, power, agency, affiliation, and impact for all learners.

2 thoughts on “Digital Literacy

  1. I really like those ‘4 moves for checking if facts are accurate’! I think it’s really important that we teach students from a young age about verifying information they find online, because fake news really is everywhere. And you’re exactly right, part of that is just teaching them to think logically about the world around them.

  2. I love the 4 tips for checking if facts are accurate. I also believe that educating ourselves and then educating the students is very important. In todays world, it is so easy for false information to be posted. By educating the students and getting them to take these steps, it will eventually become a habit that they will always use these steps. Thanks for the great post!

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